Master of "Quiet Horror" Charles L. Grant delivers one of his darkest and most fast-paced novels with Jackals.
On the surface, Jackals is a horror tale about Jim, a middle-aged man who dedicates his life to hunting down "jackals", a vicious breed of flesh-eating killers who may or may not be human. Then a young woman, battered and bleeding, comes to his door, and his life takes a dark turn. But Grant has more on his mind than simply telling a story about monsters; there's more going on here. Grant touches on what it means to be human, what makes someone a killer, and the nature of good and evil, making Jackals more of a literary horror novel. That doesn't mean that Grant skimps on what makes a horror novel work, far from it. In terms of atmosphere, imagery, and honey-smooth prose, Grant delivers.
Jackals is, hands down, one of Grant's darkest and most downbeat books, revealing a side of him that readers rarely see, which makes this book less of an outright entertainment than say, The Orchard or the Black Oak series. But it is this solemnity, this willingness to travel down the dark roads of the night, that make Jackals so memorable.
Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.
Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon.
